It just so happened that for most of my life I've lived in the suburbs.

I've been a little bit obsessed with religion, without being a religious person, for about a decade.

Meg was going to have to learn for herself what Laurie had figured out over the summer - that it was better to leave well enough alone, to avoid unnecessary encounters with the people you'd left behind, to not keep poking at that sore tooth with the tip of your tongue. Not because you didn't love them anymore, but because you did, and because that love was useless now, just another dull ache in your phantom limb.

He made me think of all the books I hadn't read, and all the ones I'd read but hadn't fully understood.

When things don't go well, it helps to think of yourself as a genius and the rest of the world as a bunch of idiots.

I write about kids growing up, I write a lot about schools and parents, and all of my experiences with those things have been suburban experiences.

I think I'm fascinated by the power of religion in our culture. Like a lot of secular, liberal people, I ignored it for a long time. Lately, of course, just from a political perspective, it's impossible to ignore.